The multi-touch technology itself is not new. Whether in the field of mobile phones and portable music players, or in the music field, said technology is widely known. In the first case, the public had access thereto, in a broadly manner, through the use thereof on the iPhone and iPod Touch, devices developed by Apple, applicant of the Multi-Touch patent. In the second case, for example, the Lemur can be cited, a music mixer with multi-touch interface, developed in 2004 by French manufacturer Jazz Mutant, a pioneer in this segment. Nowadays the Lemur (device fully controlled by the movement of the fingers) already has its successor: the Dexter.
In fact, there were several musical interfaces that have emerged since the introduction of computers in modern life, which does not mean that interfaces for analogue instruments were not available prior to that.
In patentary literature, there were found some documents relating to the subject described in the present invention without, however, anticipating or suggesting the scope thereof. Just as an example, the following documents are cited: the U.S. Pat. No. 7,479,949, owned by Apple, entitled Touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics: the U.S. Pat. No. 7,619,618, also owned by Apple, entitled Identifying contacts on a touch surface; the Brazilian application PI0706177-3, entitled “Célula portátil de dispositivos interativos para múltiplos usuários”; the U.S. application US2007198926, entitled Devices and methods of controlling manipulation of virtual objects on a multi-contact tactile screen; the international application WO2005091104, entitled Controller involving manipulation of virtual objects on a multi-contact touch screen; the French patent FR2866726, entitled Computerized equipment e.g. music software, controlling process, involves generating clipart on screen placed under transparent multi-contact face plate, and delivering touch information by face plate during each acquisition phase; the European application EP1950649 A1, entitled Device for acquiring tactile information with sequential scanning; and the European patent EP1719047 B2, entitled Controller involving manipulation of virtual objects on a multi-contact touch screen.
Therefore, it is clear that there are already in the state of the art multi-dimensional interfaces both analog and digital.
The case of the most important analog interface is that of the button accordion. However, in the accordion, the alignment of notes takes place over non-orthogonal directions, while in the representation presently proposed the alignment takes place at right angles, according to the distinction presented in FIGS. 1A and 1B. In addition, the inventors are unaware of accordions of which interfaces have Major blues or Minor blues scales, as well as interfaces where the various pentatonic scales can be represented under the same two-dimensional configuration of notes, analogous fact occurs for heptatonic scales.
Thus, although technologies related to the development of multi-touch interfaces are known, the present inventors are unaware, yet, of the existence of: (i) a method that aims to represent pentatonic, heptatonic, Major blues and Minor blues musical scales using the technique to be described, (ii) or a multi-touch device with such interface.
Therefore, the present invention proposes a representation which differs from that of the accordion, as well as from other known two-dimensional musical interfaces.
Furthermore, the representation proposed by the present invention tends to be generic, since the same “point matrix” which sets the alignment of the points may represent several scales, which is only possible due to the fact that the interface is controlled by computer. The only reservation is that the scales must have the same number of notes.